This journey begins with the Soylent Athlete, an article in which I muse about the possibilities of an athlete benefitting from a liquid-meal diet. Specifically, we ask: Can an athlete better meet his or her fitness goals by using powder meal replacements?

After months of waiting, my first shipment of Soylent finally arrived. I have already reviewed 100% Food, which proved rather tasty. In fact, I continued to purchase it well after my review published.

Will Soylent fare as well? I’m guessing you’re one of those “headline reader” types, so I doubt this is a spoiler, but the answer is probably no.

Grades

Taste: 5
Texture: 6
Nutrients: 10
Packaging: 5
Ego Depletion: 5
Price: 7 ($3.06 per meal)

Rating: 6.3

Taste

Woof. I did not like Soylent. Imagine that dusty box on your back porch, the one holding your fake Christmas tree. Imagine ripping that weirdly crispy, tired cardboard into little pieces, adding water, and then blending it into a smooth, pleasing-looking but oddly tacky liquid. Now eat it.

While I complained about 100% Food’s lack of spicy options, I realize now that having great sweet options is a huge accomplishment. In order to eat Soylent — not necessarily enjoy, but just simply eat it — I had to add cocoa powder and sweeteners. Sometimes I just poured a hearty dose of chocolate sauce into the blend. All of this, obviously, eats away at the nutritional value of Soylent — y’know, the core reason for wanting to go on Soylent.

I do think the neutral, cardboardy taste might lend itself to spicy creations, but I was so worried about making a nasty batch, that I never tempted fate and added hot sauce. Why was I worried? Because I already had to throw out one big batch.

I added some fruit as per a suggestion in the neat-looking instruction manual. I took a helping of frozen mixed berries, blended them with some water, and then used the water fruit mix as the base for the Soylent powder. They blended well — which is to say, they chemically combined well — but tasted so awful and turned so ominously gray after 12 hours in the fridge that I couldn’t stomach a second meal of the now-gritty and still-not-sweet-enough Soylent/fruit mix.

I cannot imagine many standard customers, much less food-craving college athletes, satisfying themselves on a batch of Soylent. And that’s just with regards to the taste.

NOTE: Someone on the Soylent reddit page suggested adding powdered fruits to Soylent to help with the flavoring. Because new flavoring ideas are constantly appearing, and because I certainly didn’t try all possibilities, I completely reserve the right to at any time change my opinion and pretend like I always held this new opinion.

Texture

So if 100% Food was like a milkshake in its thickness, Soylent is like chocolate milk. It’s not totally watery, but it’s smooth and thick. Problem is: It’s very tacky. And maybe I’m not using that word correctly, but it’s the closest description I can find for something that feels kind of like how I imagine paint would feel in my mouth.

It’s dry, yet somehow still a liquid. It’s sticks to my mouth, but not in a good way. It’s really not great, but it’s not horrible either.

Nutrients

Fellow redditor Alex Clifford has been on Soylent for some time now. I suggest reading through his Soylent experiences at his beautifully designed blog, Red Dog Tales. He shared some of his data with me, and the results — while much more comprehensive — mirror what I was seeing from my top-down analysis of 100% Food. Basically this: The liquid diet resulted in better health.

Here’s the gist of his changes:

So the only two categories that changed significantly for Alex while on Soylent were Alanine Aminotransferase and Triglyceride, both of which moved from unhealthy to healthy ranges. His Lipemia Index went from 11 to 4, but anything in the 0 to 50 range is okay.

I personally never had any GI issues with soylent, and I hear this latest edition has improved that kind of stuff. So I can’t but give Soylent perfect marks on the nutrition side of things.

Packaging

At first, I thought the big plastic pouring container doodad was pretty awesome. It warned me to not over-tighten it, and I did my best to gently turn it shut. But sure enough, Soylent is everywhere. I got Soylent on my car seats. I go Soylent on my clothes. There’s a Soylent ring on the fridge shelf. I got Soylent all over my hands. I tried tightening the lid more, and I got more Soylent everywhere. And that doesn’t even include the powder form.

Basically, this is how the Powder Problem works: You fill the canister half with water, then add the powder (and good lord, add something with flavor). Shake. Then add more water (to fill the canister), and then shake again. By then of this process, the raw Soylent powder should have arrived at every level location in your immediate area. And no matter how carefully I poured the powder into the canister … poof!, powder everywhere.

I’m betting I’m just super spoiled having started with 100% Food, with its neat, self-contained single meal packaging. By just the process of making Soylent — the whole five minutes necessary to make all three of my day’s meals — felt like a drag.

It’s also worth mentioning here that Soylent took almost a half year to reach me. I believe they are getting more staff and upping production paces, but basically it’s not feasible if you’re looking for an immediate, short-term order.

Ego Depletion

It was very hard to eat Soylent for every meal. But that is almost certainly because the texture was unpleasant and, more importantly, I couldn’t find a flavor (or flavors) that I really liked. Because of it’s neutral base, though, the possibility for more flavor combos exist than with, say, 100% Food. So I’m totally open to changing this section.

Price

Since 100% Food raised its price, Soylent remains among the cheapest tiers. It’s around $3. That’s pretty dang close to grocery prices. A nice midpoint, perhaps, between McDonald’s and homemade — but sans the time cost for either those two alternatives.

Conclusions

Here’s what I think I’ve decided:

1. It’s not bad enough for me to say no to Soylent forever. I’ll keep trying Soylent.
2. Generally, I don’t like Soylent.
3. And I cannot imagine this being the liquid meal that enables healthier, easier student-athlete diets.

Until the next one, eat well, my friends!

Check out the Soylent subreddit for some great resources on liquid meal-replacements.